Modeling of an Autothermal Catalytic Monolith Reformer to Obtain Hydrogen for Fuel Cells

Interest in fuel cell as a clean power generation unit has increased recently. Hydrogen is the preferred fuel for fuel cells due to high reactivity for electrochemical reaction at anode. High storage pressure of hydrogen directed the researchers to develop fuel processors for distributed hydrogen generation. In this article, a three dimensional CFD code was developed and validated to simulate the performance of a catalytic monolith reformer in which methane autothermal reforming was used for hydrogen production. A single channel of the monolith reformer was selected as the computational domain. Obtained results provided an adequate match to experimental data from literature with respect to the reactor temperature profile and the dry mole fractions of H2, CO2, and CO at reactor outlet. The percentage difference between each experimental measurement of the dry mole fraction of hydrogen and the corresponding parameter obtained from the model was less than 16%.